Vol. 7, No. 1 April 2003

Divine Intervention

[1] It
is easy to hate Elia Suleiman's Divine Intervention.

[2] If
anything, it seems to have a keen sense of the very filmmaking blunders
guaranteed to goad audiences to zone out. For one, there is no narrative
structure in the film. It is a clumsy mosaic of incomprehensible vignettes
portraying real and imagined life in an arid middle-eastern region. I mean,
who on earth wants to be repeatedly inflicted with the uneventful image of a
man waiting for a bus that is never coming. Then there is the matter of
pacing. In the Hollywood universe where "Average Shot Length" (ASL) can go as
fast as an eye-blinking 1.8 seconds (as registered, for instance, by Alex
Proyas' 1998 sci-fi Dark City), Divine Intervention meanders in
a measureless, feverish pace. The characters do not compensate for the
ennui-inducing crawl as they are either unexplainably grumpy or as
emotionally desiccated as their barren environment. And for that decisive
blow, the film's unapologetic Palestinian bias is an ideological tinderbox
that will surely cause not a few theater walkouts. In one satirical scene, E.S.,
the character played by the director himself, placidly drives along eating a
peach, and when he flings the pit out of the car window, it blows up an
Israeli tank on the side of the road.

[3] But
if Divine Intervention is a film fettered by the malaise of its own
fragmented universe nobody cares to relate to, maybe that is the point. That
said, I suggest that the key to unlocking the film is to wear special 3-D
glasses, the optic of Palestinians inside Israel. What we can see from
Palestinian eyes, precisely, is a confused mosaic of subjugation and
collective punishment; an over-extended desert experience with no oasis in
sight. For Palestinians, there is a theocratic occupation that needs to be
ended but every empirical evidence points to the contrary. Yes, it is waiting
for a bus that will never come. Unless.

[4]
Unless God's hand moves in their favor - "divine intervention" - answers to
their long-drawn history of disempowerment in the face of occupation are not
forthcoming. The feverish pace and emotionally-challenged characters then make
sense, they work to map the festering national humiliation of displacement and
stasis. Violent allusions notwithstanding, the film stops short of promoting a
programmatic jihad on Israel. I find it noteworthy that the violent
scenes occur on a different level of meaning, in magic realism, rather than in
real time and space. When a beautiful woman (Mahal Khader) is shown in a melee
with armed Israeli troops, for instance, she magically deflects bullets by
spinning and flying ala Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and, almost
laughably, counter-attacks by pelting the soldiers with stones in a modern
re-appropriation of the David and Goliath biblical episode. Freedom in the
film remains an elusive utopian wish and this is eloquently highlighted in one
poignant scene when E.S. releases a balloon imprinted with the smiling face of
Yassir Arafat. The balloon floats past a checkpoint of frenzied Israeli
soldiers, travels across the city landscape, and finally lands atop Al Aksa
mosque on the temple mount. The Arafat balloon, standing-in as a subversive
symbol for the wounded hope of liberation, hovers atop the city Palestinians
live in but cannot call their own, while the balloon landing atop the mosque
is an emblematic reiteration of the running theme- possible wish-fulfillment
only through divine intervention.

(5) I
propose that a methodical appreciation of the conjoined thematic and stylistic
conventions of Divine Intervention is conceivable by exploring its
undeniable kindredness with the research category known as Third Cinema. The
classification refers to films that express the will to national liberation
through ideologically-determined cinematic codes. Among others, the notable
titles of Third Cinema include Memories of Underdevelopment (Cuba/Tomas
Gutierrez Alea, 1968), Xala (Senegal/Ousmane Sembene, 1974), and
Perfumed Nightmare (Philippines/Kidlat Tahimik, 1976).*

(6) To
be sure, a Third Cinema analysis of Divine Intervention will not win
more fans for the film. It just offers a window to understanding Palestinian
cinema better and perhaps, on some modest level of reality, turn some of our
hatred into respect.

_____________

* For a
more detailed discussion on Third Cinema and Perfumed Nightmare, refer
to JR&F vol. 6, number 1, 2002 April edition.